Steering Committee

The NOA Steering Committee / Board of Trustees

Feel free to contact the board member nearest you with questions and ideas.

Former National Organizers Alliance Executive Director Walter Davis is now the President of the NOA Board and was one of its founding members. Davis is the former director of the Southern Empowerment Project (Maryville, Tennessee) from 2004 to 2007. From 1988 until now, he has trained hundreds of community organizers and leaders in SEP and NOA programs in community organizing, fundraising and overcoming oppression. Among Davis' varied work experiences: U.S. Peace Corps in Colombia in community development, recruiter/trainer with Canadian peace corps CUSO, Vietnam antiwar organizer in the 70s in Ontario, and ten years as popular educator at Saskatchewan's One Sky Center training in international and domestic development issues. Davis is a native of Louisville, Kentucky where he first became involved for racial justice over forty-five years ago as a teenager. Contact Davis: walter at noacentral.org

Idida Perez directs the West Town Leadership Project, an organizing project that engages parents in community-based school reform in Chicago, IL. In 1999, Idida began a monthly discussion/support group for women organizers in Chicago. She was involved with the Gathering V & VI planning committees and thinks one of NOA's strengths is its ability to attract a diversity of social justice workers.

Michael Jacoby Brown,Director/Lead Organizer with MICAH in Framingham, MA, has over 30 years of experience building community organizations. He has trained hundreds of people in religious, health, labor, government, political, housing, and other organizations who have gone on to successfully build groups to improve the world. Michael is the author of Building Powerful Community Organizations: A Personal Guide to Creating Groups that can Solve Problems and Change the World.

(See www.BuildingPowerfulCommunity Organizations.com ) He has a BA from Columbia University and an MPA from The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of Building Powerful Community Organizations: A Personal Guide to Solving Problems and Changing the World. Most recently, Michael served as the Executive Director of the Jewish Organizing Initiative (JOI). He currently serves on the Board of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods and the Board of Champions of Dunk the Vote. Michael is the NOA Treasurer.

Attica Scott is Coordinator of Kentucky Jobs With Justice and Adjunct Faculty at Bellarmine University. She provides leadership to a number of non-profit Boards including NOA, Hispanic-Latino Coalition and the Center for Labor Education and Research at the University of Kentucky. Attica holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science from historically Black Knoxville College and a graduate degree in Communications from the University of Tennessee. She is a certified anti-racism trainer through Crossroads Ministry and the Commission on Religion in Appalachia and is the mother of Advocate and Ashanti. Attica is NOA board secretary.

Cathy Howell directs the Leadership Development Program in the Field Mobilization Department at the AFL-CIO. Prior to joining the Southern Regional Field staff of the AFL-CIO in 1997, she worked as a community organizer and trainer at Western States Center in Oregon, at Grassroots Leadership in North Carolina, and at South Carolina United Action. She has also worked at Oregon NARAL, Oregon Fair Share, and ACORN in Arkansas. She is a founding member of NOA and served on the Steering Committee for 3 terms in the mid 90's. Cathy is the editor of NOAs Ark magazine.

Roger Newell is currently a Senior Campaign Communications Specialist on the national staff of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He has been involved in the labor movement for over 25 years, and has worked with many community-based organizations helping their members better understand the impact of the policies of globalization and structural adjustment on U.S. neighborhoods. He has served as the Director of the Washington, D.C. office of the National Jobs With Peace campaign and Chair of the Jobs With Justice DC chapter. Roger is an award-winning labor journalist, has served as an instructor at the National Labor College in Silver Spring (MD), and is a member of the Office and Professional Employees International Union and the National Writers Union.

Dothula Baron’s career as an organizer began over thirty years ago when she worked in the children's outreach department of a public library. It was then that she recognized a passion for supporting families overwhelmed by life’s critical challenges and burdens. She organizes around environmental justice and school equity in eastern North Carolina. With degrees in English, Library Services, and Conflict Resolution, Dothula is also a mediator/facilitator. In 2009, Dothula did outreach for NOA in North Carolina where she lives.